Jordan Unrest Subsides but Pressure on Hussein Grows

Political pressure mounted Saturday on King Hussein to dismiss his government and delay further IMF-mandated economic reforms following four days of bloody rioting over price increases.

Although the capital has been relatively unaffected by the unrest, several thousand heavily armed troops remained deployed throughout Salt, 13 miles northwest of Amman, where rioting overnight left at least 21 people injured and caused widespread damage.

Apart from a small and peaceful demonstration by university students in Amman, no further protests were reported Saturday, although the situation in Salt, Maan, Karak and several other riot-torn towns remained extremely tense.

“The situation now, touch wood, is calm,” Crown Prince Hassan, the king’s brother, told a news conference at the royal palace. Hassan is acting as regent until the king returns from the United States.

The crown prince said the rioting, which began in the southern city of Maan on Tuesday and spread north through several towns along the Jordan River to Salt on Friday, left eight people dead and more than 100 injured.

Hassan acknowledged that the rioting began as an apparently spontaneous protest over sudden increases of 20% to 50% in the prices of gasoline, milk powder, clarified butter and other imported commodities.

Islamic fundamentalists and extreme leftists then sought to exploit it, and nearly 130 of the latter--mostly members of Jordan’s banned Communist Party--were arrested, he said.

However, the prince only alluded to a more disturbing factor, which was the way the riots, edging their way up the Jordan Valley, quickly fused economic with social and political grievances and assumed, in the end, the dimensions of a violent referendum on the unpopularity of the government of Prime Minister Zaid Rifai.

Western diplomats in Amman said they thought that Hussein, who is to return home today, may eventually have to dismiss Rifai, who is widely seen as having mismanaged an economic crisis brought on by years of deficit spending, a precipitous drop in revenues and the ensuing collapse of Jordan’s currency, the dinar.

The timing of the latest price increases was also badly handled, several analysts said, because they came during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, when food consumption and family entertainment expenses both rise as a result of the lavish Iftar feasts that begin at sunset after each day of fasting.

“The way it was done, it almost appeared as if the government was trying to time the increases to have the worst possible impact,” one diplomat said. “To most people, it was another example of the way this government doesn’t seem to care about their problems,” he added.

That allegation was echoed in an extraordinary open letter that Jordan’s professional associations sent to Hassan on Saturday, urging both restraint in dealing with the protesters and supporting their demands for Rifai’s dismissal.

“The high price paid by the nation in losses of government property is all the result of a failure to deal preventively with the problem at its roots,” the signed letter said.

Urging the prince “not to compound the error with more bloodshed,” the letter recommended that troops be withdrawn from city centers in order to create “an atmosphere for dialogue with the brothers and sons who protested against the injustice and disdain of a government that the people had hoped would be replaced long ago.”

The letter was signed by the heads of 10 associations representing about 40,000 engineers, doctors, dentists, lawyers, pharmacists, veterinarians, journalists, geologists and agricultural scientists.

While the professionals, like the poorer protesters they sympathized with, were careful not to criticize Hussein personally, their letter hinted that the monarch could become the next target of the discontent unless he responds quickly and positively to the rioters’ complaints.

It said there is an urgent need for a new government that “would enjoy national credibility” and strongly implied that the continuation of the present government would erode the credibility of the monarchy itself.

Diplomats said that the king is now clearly in a difficult position, for while he has escaped any personal blame for the economic crisis and the widespread discontent it has spawned, there now seems to be an equally widespread expectation that, when he returns from the United States, he will quickly set things right.

‘Very Difficult Situation’

“He’s in a very difficult situation, no doubt about it,” one Western envoy said. “I think Rifai will have to go soon, although not immediately because that would look like capitulation.”

Dealing with the economic crisis will be more problematic, however. “Hussein can’t rescind the price increases, but he may have to delay other increases and measures that were in the pipeline,” even though this may create new difficulties with the International Monetary Fund on the rescheduling of Jordan’s $6-billion debt, the diplomat added.

Crown Prince Hassan told reporters that Jordan will “not be deterred by . . . violent pressures from obviating our economic problems.”

That his elder brother will be under great pressure to rescind, or at least postpone, some of the more austere economic reforms was clear from a visit to Salt, however.

The twisted remains of overturned and burned-out cars and buses blocked a dozen squares and intersections, while the streets around them were a littered carpet of broken glass, stones, tear-gas canisters and spent shell casings. Gaping black holes marked the locations where four banks, a finance company and dozens of government-owned or -run stores had stood the night before.

But the most frightening aspect of this scene were the sullen and unemployed young men who loitered amid the litter of the previous night’s rampage, anger and frustration still plainly etched on their faces.

In Washington, King Hussein blamed the rioting at home on the failure of several Arab governments to honor their longstanding promises of financial aid to Jordan.

Asked in a Cable News Network interview to name the Arab states that had reneged on their promises, Hussein replied, “They range from Libya, Algeria, to Saudi Arabia and the (Persian) Gulf states as well as Iraq.”

Expounding on the rioting, Hussein said:

“It’s not easy for Jordanians. I am sad that these incidents have happened, but on the other hand, I am proud of the overall majority of people who have taken it as all of us are doing. . . . We are certainly determined to stand in the future and stand on our own feet.”